Judge schedules Newsmax case over 2020 election lies for September trial
Source: CNN Business
Published 1:07 PM EDT, Wed April 3, 2024
CNN — A judge has scheduled a major defamation case against right-wing cable channel Newsmax to go to trial in late September, putting the battle over 2020 election lies front-and-center at the peak of the 2024 campaign.
Newsmax and the voting technology company Smartmatic could still reach an out-of-court settlement, and further delays are possible. But if the September 24 trial date holds, the fallout from former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election will be on full display as he tries to return to the White House.
The trial would also be the first of more than a dozen high-profile defamation cases to face a jury, all stemming from the false claims that Smartmatic and another voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, rigged the 2020 election by flipping millions of votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Those lies — championed by Trump and his allies in Congress and the right-wing press — fueled the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021.
The Newsmax trial is slated to take place in Delaware Superior Court, and Judge Eric Davis, who presided over the historic case brought by Dominion against Fox News last year, is similarly handling the Newsmax-Smartmatic lawsuit. The case is still in the discovery phase, and it’s possible Davis decides later that it shouldn’t proceed to trial. Smartmatic filed the lawsuit in 2021, claiming that Newsmax intentionally promoted lies that the company was involved in rigging the election because it helped the network close the ratings gap with Fox.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/media/smartmatic-lawsuit-newsmax-trial-date/index.html
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Good. 
